Secretary Clinton: Escalation of Regime Violence in Syria

Sharp Escalation of Regime Violence in Syria

Press Statement

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Washington, DC

January 30, 2012

The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the escalation of the Syrian regime’s violent and brutal attacks on its own people. In the past few days we have seen intensified Syrian security operations all around the country which have killed hundreds of civilians. The government has shelled civilian areas with mortars and tank fire and brought down whole buildings on top of their occupants. The violence has escalated to the point that the Arab League has had to suspend its monitoring mission. The regime has failed to meet its commitments to the Arab League to halt its acts of violence, withdraw its military forces from residential areas, allow journalists and monitors to operate freely and release prisoners arrested because of the current unrest.

The Security Council must act and make clear to the Syrian regime that the world community views its actions as a threat to peace and security. The violence must end, so that a new period of democratic transition can begin.

Tomorrow, I will attend a United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria where the international community should send a clear message of support to the Syrian people: we stand with you. The Arab League is backing a resolution that calls on the international community to support its ongoing efforts, because the status quo is unsustainable. The longer the Assad regime continues its attacks on the Syrian people and stands in the way of a peaceful transition, the greater the concern that instability will escalate and spill over throughout the region.

She is very Presidential , we deserve the best but the DNC cheated and picked the worse . Her old Campaign bill is still not paid for , how can we possibly think she would run again if that is not even paid down . How do you beat a Fictional Charector that excepted money and will continue regardless of where it ” Money” comes from ! To this day it pains me to hear him speak .

While her debt is outstanding, her campaign is allowed to remain in suspension. Guess whose campaign is also still suspended ? WJC’s! A suspended campaign can always be reactivated. Much less complicated than starting (again) from scratch.

Biden’s (unnecessary) admission that he had reservations about launching the raid that took out Bin Laden, an accomplishment touted not once but twice in the State of the Union, makes me wonder if the political powers that be aren’t shopping for another VP.

I saw part of that clip tonight and didn’t know what I was looking at. It does make me question his qualifications to be POTUS, but I had no doubts about that in 2008 when I voted for HRC. I like him. But that isn’t the issue, is it?

“It got to me and he said ‘Joe, what do you think?'” Biden said at a House Democratic retreat in Maryland on Friday. “I said ‘We owe the man a direct answer.’ ‘Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go. We have to do two more things to see if he’s there.’”

I want to know what those two things were before I question whether he should be a heartbeat away from the presidency. I just can’t get over the feeling that he may have to “take one for the team” and step aside to make way for somebody else. I think the “unforced” admission to an unpopular stand is odd and the fact that it was said at a Democratic party retreat seems strange too.

Alice never sleeps on this blog. We always come back to her, don’t we?

Me? I live eight blocks from where the hijackers were living. I work in a three-story building where eight people had eleven relatives in the towers. I don’t think we owed him anything more than what he got.

I wonder what Joe was talking about. But we DID know it was he who was there. We did not need to do another thing. It might have warned him off. No – Joe. Wrong there. It was Bin Laden. Panetta made the right move. (Yes, Panetta.)

My concern is not with Biden’s position but with the why and the how we are learning it.

– The Florida primary is tomorrow, so this will be buried in the public arena.

– In the general election, nobody is going to bother campaigning against the VP when there is so much else out there to choose from, especially if you add in all the tinfoil hat “he’s-a-Kenyan-socialist-commie-muslim-antichrist” conspiracy stuff.

– If was not an accidental admission on a talk show or something forced out of him in a hard-hitting interview. This was in prepared remarks. He meant for this to get out.

– His audience was, for the most part, Democratic party people. He was speaking at the House Democrats’ pep rally retreat in Maryland. It’s public knowledge because there was press coverage there, but this was a speech meant for party insiders. Why did they need to know what his unpopular opinion was and why did they need to be informed via a speech when the cameras were around instead of, say, in an email? With the Republican primary devolving into a Newt vs. Mitt mud wrestling match (I apologize for that mental image), who thought it was a good idea to draw attention to the Obama administration by making people question the VP’s judgement?

I think of politics as a game of strategy and calculated risk. This is not good strategy unless the goal is to create a reason to dump Biden and adding any more risk onto this re-election bid seems foolhardy at best. . If they aren’t purposefully paving Joe’s way out of the executive branch, then they are really in need of help in the strategy department ASAP.

I was hoping that you would find some element that I had overlooked that would make it all make sense because, looking at those Democrats currently involved in the political realm, I don’t see anyone who would do better than Biden as VP. I mean Vice President Kerry? Vice President Hoyer? Give me a break!

Looking at his cabinet, I don’t see anyone outside of the Secretary of State who is politically viable and she has clearly said several times that she is not planning to be anyone’s VP and I don’t see why she’d want to work in a West Wing that seems to still be very stuck in 2008. If 2016 is on her mind, there are plenty of way to stay politically interesting between whenever she leave the State Department and when campaigns for 2016 start coming to life.

There is no hot shot, up and coming governor or well known political operative that I can think of as a possible replacement for Joe Biden, but I can think of plenty that would weaken the Democratic ticket in an election that is shaping up to be a very close one.

The comment is reminiscent of Obama’s Libya NFZ announcement which began with, “I didn’t want to do this….” It could simply reflect the administration’s “restraint strategy.” They don’t want to take these initiatives. But, their better impulses prevail. And abracadabra! It works out!

On a deeper, darker level, as indomitable as they may try to appear, the Obama team could be terrified that minus HRC on the cabinet, they could be defeated, and are attempting a transition – awkward at best, and I cannot imagine what the deal could be.

As i said somewhere else on this thread (I think) dice are rolling. The knives are out. Would-be presidents are all around, and they’d each give an arm – you know the rest of the song. Maybe Obama, who is left-handed, has decided to cut off his right hand in favor of his #3 left hand . I don’t like it, but if both agree I just want both of them happy. More than anything, I want HRC content.

I can’t figure this out. I want the country in safe hands. I want HRC content. I can only do what she sked; to watch and wait.

I saw the whole clip a few minutes ago and also I slept on it, and now the answer appears so simple and clear. The Insider report had Obama out of the loop until Sunday when the action was already underway. Biden’s story was to put Obama inside the loop from Friday. It’s that simple. He simply wanted to put that conversation at the beginning of the weekend to make it appear Obama knew what was up. Obama was told on the golf course on Sunday according to the Insider. Biden’s story is to counter that one. (So far the Insider has not been wrong.)

The whole operation was Panetta’s and his call. The Biden story is to shift it to Obama.

I too wonder about his implying that she too hesitated considering her more centrist, some might say hawkish, stances in military matters since her time in the Senate. Hedging on military decisions is out of her character.

I also doubt Obama had no clue. If he didn’t know that a surgical strike of this nature in the making we’d be deep into “who’s running this place” territory – a scary place indeed.

I didn’t say he had no clue. I only meant he was not in the loop as to how imminent the strike might have been. This was a topic since August 2010. They were pretty sure they knew who lived there. Of course he knew.

That was Biden just being Biden. Joe couldn’t keep his mouth shut even if someone put a clamp on it. LOL!!

He was trying to build up Obama by saying that, other than Panetta, it was only Obama who had the confidence to go after Osama. He was saying that everyone else at the table hedged their bets and that he (Biden) adviced against it.

His audience was House Democrats, not exactly a group hostile to the administration, particularly since the 2010 Congressional Butt-Kicking excised most of the ‘blue dog’ Democrats and replaced the with tea folk. The resulting Democratic caucus, though smaller in number, is more liberal than it was previously because those that remain tend to be less moderate and from more traditionally liberal districts. Unless he is trying to get himself replaced as VP, I see no reason for him to admit he was wrong while preaching to the choir with regard to supporting the president.

I could buy that if he was speaking to voters as opposed to Democratic House Reps and, I’ll assume, their closest aides. Obama doesn’t need a boost with House Democrats and the public has forgotten about this already and are busy watching Romney win Florida. We’re only talking about because some of us are wonks who don’t like it when things don’t make sense.

I would give Joe that much credit! Anyway, Obama looked plenty good announcing OBL was dead. It has been the main highlight of his presidency.

I think Joe was just being Joe, i.e. gaffe-prone. And as gaffes go, it wasn’t his worst. Still, if the Dems had any sense, they’d beg Hillary to replace him on the ticket – not because Joe’s been such a dusaster but because Obama’s going to need her help in battleground states like Missouri, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania…I know Joe’s supposed to have blue-collar cred, but I just don’t see him bringing a lot to the ticket in states where Obama really needs help.

Nope. It was carefully planned to make it look like Obama knew about this before the weekend when he did not and did not make the call. It was Panetta’s Op and Panetta made the call. Obama found out on Sunday on the golf course from which he was whipped to the White House. HRC and Gates – and others were already in the Sit Room when he arrived. It was orchestrated to make it look like Obama made the call. Untrue – and we knew it from the next day. Navy Seal 8 was under the command of the CIA and it was completely Panetta’s call.

I don’t think Obama was out of the loop until Sunday. My recollection is there was a lot of back-and-forth discussion with Obama about whether and how to act on the intelligence data that OBL had been located. Gates and Panetta favored an air strike, Hillary wanted immediate action by land or air, but Obama vacillated, influenced largely by Jarett who thought a failure would kill Obama’s re-election chances. Thinking he would stall Panetta, Obama said he favored a strike by land. What he didn’t know is that Panetta had a land strike already organized. Here’s the rest:

“Hillary Clinton was the first to pledge her full support for Panetta, indicating she would defend him if necessary. Similar support was then followed by Gates. The following day, and with Panetta’s permission, Clinton met in private with Bill Daley and urged him to get the president’s full and open approval of the Panetta plan. Daley agreed such approval would be of great benefit to the action, and instructed
Clinton to delay proceeding
until he had secured that
approval. Daley contacted
Clinton within hours of their
meeting indicating Jarrett
refused to allow the president
to give that approval. Daley
then informed Clinton that he
too would fully support Panetta in his actions, even if it meant
disclosing the president’s
indecision to the American
public should that action fail to produce a successful
conclusion. Clinton took that
message back to Panetta and
the CIA director initiated the 48 hour engagement order.”

True, Obama didn’t initiate the final order but strictly speaking Panetta was acting on the President’s expressed support for a ground attack — albeit intended as a delaying tactic.

OK, maybe he wasn’t out of the loop, but there has to be a reason beyond Joe being Joe for those remarks. Perhaps it was simply to make Obama appear more decisive than he was (is). These are the articles I saw at the time.

It doesn’t read like a gaffe. It isn’t halting or bumbling in the was most mistakes sort of tumble out when we make them and there was no retraction or clarification by the White House as there usually is when Biden messes up.

Discourse, Dylan Ratigan used your “Space Oddity” header today. His guest is complaining about us depending on Russia for space transportation, validating what I said somewhere about Newt’s lack of imagination re: getting space coast votes. SOMEONE should tell FL that we will institute a new transportation system! Confederacy of Dunces!

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